Altered topological organization and functional brain connectome in breast cancer patients with fear of cancer recurrence

Motivation: Fear of cancer recurrence (FCR) is a common psychological condition in breast cancer patients. Goal(s): To reveal the FCR neural mechanism on the whole-brain connectome network level. Approach: We collected resting-state functional MRI from 43 breast cancer patients and 40 healthy controls (HCs). Results: Graph theory analyses revealed a decreased clustering coefficient in breast cancer patients compared to healthy control subjects. Breast cancer patients showed lower FCS in hub regions of DMN and higher FCS in frontoparietal, DMN, dorsal attention and primary somatomotor networks. Among the hyperconnected regions, the left inferior frontal operculum (IFO) showed a significant positive correlation with FCRI-severity. Impact: Our study indicated that breast cancer patients have a more random-like functional network. FCS in some specific brain regions of breast cancer patients such as left IFO was associated with FCR severity.